ARoS installations

 

We climb the stairs of the beautiful ARoS art gallery to the next floor and enter another darkened room.

Inside are two huge video screens showing a film of Theresienstadt concentration camp as it stands today. The buildings are eerie and empty. 

Visitors come and go as the film plays. Their silhouetted bodies cast long shadows in the brooding presence of the camp images. 

All is silent save for the sad soundtrack of a cello and violin playing a piece composed specially for the exhibition by Scottish artist, Susan Philipsz.

The exhibition hall across the way houses more fantastic work. It's great to be greeted by a Grayson Perry tapestry entitled 'The Expulsion from No. 8 Eden Close'. 

We saw it last in Birmingham a few years ago. The tapestry is part of a larger body of work based on The Rake's Progress called , 'The Vanity of Small Differences'. 

The next room and another massive video screen.  The loop starts running with a tiny image of a woman in a blue dress. Slowly the camera zooms in and Marilyn is revealed. 

Her image gets larger and larger until it fills the screen. The giant and heavily distorted Marilyn begins her dance ...

The next room is quiet and contemplative. It contains a deconstructed tree, harvested at various points throughout the year.

Sandwiched between massive sheets of perspex it is a thing of beauty, frozen in time.

From the beauty of nature to the stark and brutal contrasts of human life. 

The next room is garishly lit, a broken 'Las Vegas' sign embedded in an iconic aluminium Airstream caravan.

On the opposite wall a series of framed signs hang neatly. They've been collected from lost souls around the world. Most are frayed and tattered, some with blotchy ink-runs where rain has soaked into the cardboard. 

They all ask for but one thing ... a few coins for a meal.

'The Fucked Couple' by Tony Matelli stops us in our tracks.  A eulogy to love and fortitude it's a luridly realistic reconstruction of a near naked couple, disfigured and mutilated, as they make their way from the wreckage, their hands still held tight.

A modern day expulsion from the Garden of Eden perhaps, the couple left undead to wander the world endlessly.

Ron Mueck's, 'Boy' brings this floor to an end. The huge sculpture stands almost fifteen feet tall, its hands and head nearly touching the roof of the gallery.

It was produced by Mueck for the Millennium Dome 2000 AD. celebrations and bought a year later by ARoS.

There is no escape from its mournful, vulnerable gaze - the Boy's eyes follow you round wherever you go.